02/19/2012

While we've still yet to see anything truly Earth-shattering, the tandem of Rafael Rivera and Paul Thurrott continues to churn out insight about interesting new features they've discovered in Windows 8 milestone 3. The latest discovery is that Aero in Windows 8 will be able to automatically adapt itself to match your current wallpaper image. It's a bit like what Windows 7 already does with your taskbar icons: if a program alert needs your attention, the icon will glow using the predominant color (e.g. Firefox should glow orange).

And yes, you can already make Windows 7 behave this way if you like. Over at CodePlex, there's a little program called Aura that parks itself in your system tray and automatically adjusts your window borders to compliment your wallpaper images. The effect is quite nice, and you can try it out by minimizing your windows and cycling through your theme's wallpapers (right click on your desktop and choose next desktop background).

02/18/2012

Google is facing an inquest after it was discovered that it had been bypassing Apple?s Safari privacy settings on its Mac and iOS platforms. Google, Vibrant Media Inc., WPP PLC's Media Innovation Group LLC and Gannett Co.'s PointRoll Inother advertising companies have been tracking the web browsing habits of Safari and Safari Mobile users even though Safari has built in security protection to prevent that from happening.

Firefox is a powerful web browser that has been loved by many web surfers in recent years. This could mainly be because of the fact that Mozilla Firefox has been a much better alternative to the now virtually obsolete Internet Explorer. Moreover, Firefox enables users to use amazing add-ons that makes internet browsing easier and more enjoyable. In recent times, many people have begun browsing the web through iPads. Sadly, Mozilla Firefox cannot be used as an internet browser for [...]

Evernote, the popular multi-platform 'digital memory' app, has done some serious re-tooling of its Web interface. In addition to a more polished UI that more closely mirrors the look of Evernote on the desktop, the update brings features like notebook stacks and snippet view to the Web.

Auto-saving is now enabled as well, and you can select multiple items by holding down the Cmd or Ctrl key on your Mac or Windows keyboard. If you've got items stored in your notebooks that you want to share with friends or co-workers, Evernote has improved that process, too. You can quickly post an item to Facebook, share it via email, or generate a Web sharing link to paste into an IM conversation or status update.

I'm not claiming that toy maker Step2 is deliberately guilty of age discrimination, but when they go and make a racing car bed inspired by the Corvette Z06, they had to realize it would appeal to more than just kids. More »

Gizmodo is not objective. It never has been, I don't think. And I hope it never will be. Because the point isn't to be something as meaningless—and frankly, false—as objective. The point is to tell the truth. More »

As you have surely noticed by now, the site has a new design and layout. The old layout, with light text on a dark background, has been dropped, and the new site has switched to follow the golden rule set by every website designer, usability expert and ergonomics consultant on the planet: dark text on a light background. Readers from around the world had asked for the change for a couple of years now, and I finally caved in to their requests. The readability is now vastly improved, but the framing layout with orange links on a dark background has been retained, to preserve something of the feel of the old site. Photo stories will continue to use a dark background, as we feel that the darker layout does more justice to Scott Jones' beautiful photos.

The change has not been completely finalized - there are still one or two points of the site that need to be tweaked, and all comments and suggestions for improvement are more than welcome. Some tables, in particular, could still appear with either the wrong background or the wrong text color; if you spot any errors, please feel free to drop us a line at webmaster@motomatters.com. Site supporters have a wider choice of page layouts, including the option of reverting to the previous layout with the light text on a dark background.

Go back through every review we've ever written here, and one underlying theme you'll find is that we're tired of the same old microSD card and, boy howdy, do we wish someone would sex things up a little bit.

Wait. Scratch that. Haven't once thought that. But Samsung apparently is solving the problem nobody has with the way memory cards look by introducing a "stylish design" in its line of SD and microSD cards. More important, we suppose, is that these new cards are supposed to be waterproof, shockproof and magnetproof, and have 24MB-per-second read speeds. As in, survive up to 24 hours in water (longer than you would last, we might add), handle being run over by a 1.6-ton vehicle (again, you wouldn't make it) and resist up to 10,000 gaus, which Samsung says is a little less than the power of a medical imaging magnet. (Which we play with on weekends, just for fun.)

In all seriousness, SD card performance is important (provided your phone can still take one), as is survivability. There's important stuff on there, and performance and price are sexy enough. Though we would recommend some sort of instant-uploading of images, just in case.

Former Sun Microsystems CEO Jonathan Schwartz is offering caregivers a social networking service designed to be free of confusing privacy policies and invasive advertising. Social networking is far older than Facebook, MySpace or even Friendster, according to Schwartz, CareZone founder and CEO. Family is actually the world's oldest social network.